Hope
by Alryssa
Summary: Post-season 4: In the depths of the Principal Office, Dot Matrix finds herself faced with the awesome tasks of evicting Megabyte - and piecing a tattered relationship back together...


'Hope'  
post-season 4  
rating: G  
  
  
Dot edged her way down the dark corridor, sliding her feet forward as she guided herself along the wall, hoping she didn't run into anything that might make a sound and give her away. Even the sound of her own, fear-ridden heartbeat felt like it might as well be blaring her presence to the entire population of Mainframe.   
  
She usually hated the dark; but with Megabyte in control of the Principal Office, it was now one of the few things that made her feel anything approaching safe. She didn't want to see who he might appear as next. Bad enough that she'd come within mere nanos of *marrying* him...  
  
She cut that train of thought off, pausing only long enough to take a deep, shuddering breath. She had to focus, concentrate on the task at hand. This long-abandoned section of the Principal Office could be their best - and their only - chance of beating the virus once and for all. The Command.com of Mainframe was no fool. She was heading for her contingency plan, put into place after the restart to prevent just this event from happening again - the auxiliary control room.   
  
Very few even knew about the place - which was as it should be. This room was located in a sensory 'blind spot' deep inside the Principal Office, an area so close to the Core that its residual energy negated any attempt at monitoring. It was the perfect place for a backup centre of command... she just had to *get* there in one piece, and soon. She suspected that as a target, she was pretty high on the Trojan virus' hit list, and her disappearance from the sensory grid would catch his attention fairly quickly. She had to hope that he would assume she had gotten out of the building, and would concentrate his 'hunt' in the system outside, instead of digging deeper inside the Principal Office.  
  
Either way, she needed to work fast. But fast wasn't really an option in the pitch dark.   
  
She cursed under her breath.   
  
Something moved in the darkness ahead.  
  
She tensed, every muscle bunching up, her fight-or-flight instinct on high alert. She moved a cautious hand to the gun in its holster on her thigh, holding her breath.   
  
Another movement. Like sandpaper on stone, it was a harsh whisper in the pitch-black stillness.   
  
*Please*, she found herself thinking, *let it be quick. If he's going to kill me here, please, just let it be quick*. She knew she was no match against the virus in a physical struggle.   
  
She drew the gun from its holster, pointed it ahead of her. It would make little difference, if it *was* Megabyte, but at least it made her feel like she was trying to defend herself, instead of just waiting for the blow. Her heartbeat was betraying her silence, beating out her terror like some sort of sick anthem.   
  
Bright light suddenly washed out her vision. Raising an arm to her face to block the intrusion, she cried out, anticipating the strike that would inevitably follow -   
  
"Dot!"  
  
A surprised, but tempered whisper. A familiar, yet at the same time unsettling, voice. The blinding light dropped to the floor, casting its glare upon the bare stone. She dropped her arm tentatively, blinking to adjust to the brightness of the corridor, and focussed on the figure standing just three feet from her.   
  
"B.... Bob?" she countered, warily, the gun dropping just a little.   
  
"Yeah. It's me."  
  
"I..." She faltered. She was still tense, she realised. Not certain who to trust anymore, if she could even trust her own eyes, after what had happened. Even looking into that face... a face that used to make her feel safe, loved and wanted, now caused more pain than any physical wound Megabyte could have inflicted upon her. Guilt welled up once more.   
  
"It *is* me, Dot." He raised his arm. Glitch was resting on his bracer - the source of the light he'd just shone in her face. The upgraded keytool was the one thing the Trojan couldn't duplicate. She exhaled with relief, returning the gun to its holster. "Although... how do I know you're you?"  
  
She stopped in her mental tracks. How could he...? Then she realised. It was only reasonable to suspect; after all, they'd all been split up and scattered around the Principal Office; Megabyte could be any one of them. She knew she was who she said she was, but Bob didn't.   
  
"It *is* me, Bob, I..." she fished around for something, anything. Something Megabyte wouldn't know. She recalled, and laughed nervously. "OK... I remember the time when you caught Enzo trying to paint Frisket blue, and we had to bathe him three times because he got more on himself than the dog..."   
  
The Guardian relaxed, a smile crossing his face at the memory.   
  
"I thought you'd be down here. Heading for the control room?"  
  
She nodded, the adrenaline surge that had washed over her beginning to dissipate, her frayed nerves only somewhat comforted by his presence.   
  
"Come on," he said, "We'd better move."  
  
The two moved off together down the corridor, a much faster process now thanks to the keytool's light. Dot realised belatedly, and with a heavy heart, that if this had been just a few cycles ago, Bob would have held her hand as they went; a simple, but reassuring gesture of an affection that had long since been betrayed. Instead, they moved together, side by side, stealth in every movement as they secured their path; her shoulder occasionally coming into contact with his duty armour. A fleeting touch, that was borne of accident rather than intent, withdrawn as quickly as it was initiated.   
  
Nanos felt like seconds; the silence broken only by the occasional query to confirm their bearings. Then -   
  
"Ah! Got it!"  
  
Bob stopped, then began moving barrels from in front of the innocuous-looking doorway. Dot was on autopilot as she moved to one side of the cleared doorway and opened the disguised panel, punching in a coded sequence. The door irised open, dim red emergency lighting flickering to life, spilling onto the hastily-rigged equipment that lay under dust covers. The two sprites stepped inside, Bob securing the door behind them as Dot moved about the small room removing covers and turning on monitors.   
  
That's right Dot, she thought to herself, bury yourself in your work as usual. That's what you always do. But she didn't know how else to deal with being stuck alone with the one sprite she'd hurt so much; the sprite who was busy squinting at a fuzzy monitor, fiddling with its controls in a vain attempt to clear the image. He was feeling just as awkward, she could tell, but she didn't know how they could even begin to talk. It just wasn't the right time...   
  
She stopped momentarily, as she crouched beneath a console in search of an errant cable. It wasn't *ever* the right time. It was like the 'Net's sole reason for existence was to keep them from ever having the right time to talk, to be together. To be happy.   
  
"Need some help down there?"  
  
Dot ducked her head out from the workstation to see Bob leaning over it, looking down at her with a enquiring expression on his face. She took a deep breath, some small part of her irrational mind still panicking at the association of him with Megabyte. Would she ever be rid of it?  
  
"Oh... no, I'm fine. Just... a loose cable."   
  
She pushed the cable's connector back into its socket, and the workstation hummed to life. He stepped back from the panel, and began assessing the displays. Dot moved to look at them herself, trying not to look at him, but she couldn't help it. Her gaze wandered to his arm, to the keytool he'd almost died seperating himself from, and from there, she found herself looking slowly upward, at his face... and then looked away, confused by what she'd seen. But her eyes slowly wandered back again, curiosity overpowering her self-consciousness. She wanted to know she wasn't imagining things.  
  
He continued to look intensely focused on the equipment. She didn't even realise she was staring at him, until he looked across and inadvertantly caught her eye. But she couldn't look away. He turned his head, embarrassed, but found himself looking back at her after a few moments.   
  
"What?" he asked.  
  
She simply looked at him. She was right. There, in the emergency lighting, she saw them. His web scars, faint, but present, trailing up his face and down his neck. But how...  
  
"Dot?" he prodded, feeling uneasy under her gaze.  
  
"Bob, the scars...they're back..." She went to reach up to his face, to touch them, but he raised his hand to stop her, a pleading expression on his face.   
  
"Don't," he whispered hoarsely.   
  
"I thought Glitch - "  
  
"Glitch gave me back the code I was missing, but he couldn't repair the damage that had already been done. I was hoping the code graft would help, but it looks like they're coming back..." He looked down. "I guess scars really are permanent," he added, bitterly.  
  
"Physical ones, perhaps..." she said. She wasn't entirely sure about mental ones. "Bob... I think they're beautiful."  
  
He moved away from her. She couldn't see his face to guess what he might be thinking, and it hurt.   
  
"Bob, please..."  
  
"Dot, stop. I can't do this right now."  
  
Dot's face hardened a little. She was tired of putting things off, spammit!  
  
"We need to talk."  
  
His head whipped round at that, his brown eyes narrowed in an accusatory glare. "And what would you like to talk about? About how you dropped me like a hot null? How everyone turned their backs on me, because I didn't look 'right'? I had all my friends around me, but I've never felt so alone. And now everyone's acting like nothing happened!"  
  
Dot bit her lip, shook her head, fighting the lump that was rising in her throat. "I'm so sorry, Bob - "  
  
"No." His expression softened a little, as he broke eye contact, gazing instead at the displays. "It hurts too much right now."  
  
"I don't know what else I can say..."   
  
"Then don't. I..." he sighed, and gripped the console with both hands, trying to find the words. "I love you, Dot. I do... you know that. But I can't... I can't forgive you... or myself... just yet."  
  
Dot would have cried, if she'd had any tears left to shed. She had exhausted herself earlier in Floating Point Park, weeping her pain away until there was nothing but numb, terrifying guilt.  
  
"I'm sorry," he continued. "I'm sorry I let myself be convinced so easily that I was the copy. I'm sorry I let myself get bogged down in my own self-doubt when I should have been questioning him..." He turned back to face her, the frustration and pain evident in his eyes. "And most of all... I'm sorry I let him do this to you."  
  
He extended his hand, reaching up to her face, but he hesitated a bare few millimetres from her skin, as if afraid he might break her. Dot wanted so badly to just make the move, press his hand to her cheek and tell him it would be all right; but she knew that would be the wrong thing to do. I don't deserve you, Bob, she wanted to say.   
  
"I... I guess he had us all infected, somehow," she said, softly. Not that she was trying to lay all the blame elsewhere - but it was like her mind had been fogged whenever she was around the imposter, and she hadn't even realised it until Bob had come back and revealed his true identity.   
  
"Maybe."  
  
He dropped his hand, and turned away again, reabsorbing himself in the console displays. She sighed, wondering why the ground hadn't just opened up and swallowed her whole.   
  
An insistent beeping from her side of the console suddenly broke the awkward silence. Glad of the distraction, she moved quickly to assess the cause. Bob glanced over, a concerned expression on his face.   
  
"What's that?" he asked.  
  
Dot shut off the small alarm, and began rapidly tapping in commands.   
  
"My personal reminder," she replied. "I knew Megabyte would be using the sensor systems to track us. Once one gets close to the Core, the energy fluctuations prevent him from doing so. I knew we'd only have a short time before he investigated further..." she trailed off, as she tried to recall the commands Mouse had shown her, her fingers poised over the console. She uttered a light curse. Bob moved a little closer to look over her shoulder.   
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
"Attempting... ah! Now I remember." She resumed her orchestra of taps and touches, accessing the PO's secondary security grid. "I'm creating sensory 'ghosts' - I'm using images taken by the grid over several cycles to compile a false feedback to the war room. Hopefully it'll keep Megabyte satisfied long enough to execute the next part of the plan, which - oh, no..." She paused, hoping her initial assessment was wrong. It wasn't.   
  
"What - "  
  
"It's Megabyte. He's trying to re-route power from the Core to the sensory grid."  
  
Bob turned to his own console, and confirmed it.   
  
"We can't let him find us, not now!" Her voice was shaking as she said it, an edge of panic creeping in unchecked. It wasn't lost on the Guardian.  
  
"What are our options?" he said in a firm, but urgent tone, hoping it would be the impetus the Command.com needed to keep it together and focus on the task at hand. It seemed to help. She took a deep breath and composed herself, then brought up a schematic of the Principal Office's power grid on her display. He moved closer as she highlighted and enlarged a section, rotating it in three dimensions.   
  
"Here," she said, indicating a maintenance duct. "We need to access the circuits there. If we destroy this, this and this - " she enlarged the diagram again to illustrate her plan, " - circuit, and reconfigure the others, we can make it seem like an overload rather than sabotage."  
  
"Right," he said. "How far from here is it?"  
  
"It's a bit of a crawl, but not too far."  
  
"Can you stall him until I can get to it?"   
  
She looked at him in puzzlement. "Bob, I'm much smaller, I can get - "  
  
"No," he replied, in a tone of voice that told her he wasn't to be argued with. "I..." he trailed off, momentarily, then corrected himself. "We... need you here."  
  
He was right, and she knew it. Reluctantly, she moved from the console, and headed towards the back of the small room. Bob paused only to retrieve some needed tools and followed. She knelt by an access panel. At her nod, Bob went down on one knee, and tugged it from the wall to reveal the small crawlspace behind it, lined with conduits and wires.   
  
"Here. This connects to the maintenance ducts."  
  
"Will he be able to track my movements in here?"  
  
"I'll do what I can," she replied. Bob looked at her directly.   
  
"But?"   
  
She bit her lip. "Bob, I don't know how much he knows about this place. This may be my territory but..." She broke eye contact, self-doubt suddenly seizing hold. What if Megabyte already knew what they were planning? What if this was part of his Hunt? What if... what if she were sending Bob... to be deleted?   
  
She must have given herself away in her demeanour, or perhaps he just knew how she felt, because he reached out and gently placed his hand under her chin, tilting her head up to meet his eyes again.   
  
"I'll be all right," he said. And it wasn't just a reassurance; it was a statement of fact. And she felt safe again - for a moment. It was a brief moment, but it was something she would hold on to in the battle ahead.   
  
She nodded slowly, and he pulled back to enter the crawlspace. Some part of her irrational mind panicked.   
  
"Bob?"  
  
He glanced up at her. "I... I just want to tell you..."   
  
She faltered. How could she tell him she loved him, after everything she'd done? It seemed so hypocritical, yet -   
  
"I know," he replied, simply; and then he was gone.   
  
Dot stared into the darkness for a nano, that all-too familiar sense of dread creeping up on her; that deep-rooted worry that she might never see him again. The small control room couldn't have felt bigger, colder or emptier than it did right now. But there was hope; and she knew as long as she had that, there would always be possibilities.  
  
Dot Matrix replaced the panel, returned to her console, and waited.  
  
  
* * * 


End file.
